Memories for Matinees
by counterpunch
Summary: "There's been an accident," Rachel hears while wearing white.


No one saw it coming.

Not even the other driver.

Every so often Rachel thinks about it now, how they were all so close to falling apart. Whenever she opens their closet, the dry cleaning bag containing her wedding dress is shoved all the way in the back. With dresses, blouses, and cardigans in the way, it's barely noticeable, but it's all she sees.

Who knew just getting dressed in the morning could kick her in the heart? It almost fulfilled its purpose. They were so close to forever.

It was all a mistake.

Sometimes, it wasn't so bad. She wasn't by herself, which was something. There were two toothbrushes by the sink and a newspaper that wasn't hers on the kitchen countertop. Two people making a life together, that's what they did. But it did nothing to mask the emptiness she felt, the emptiness they _both_ felt.

They clung to it at night, because in each other's hearts was where their love had lived and died on the asphalt with shards of glass and blood, so much blood everywhere.

Most of the time they don't talk. It's better that way. If they speak, somehow the illusion of what they're doing shatters and is louder than the silence.

She wishes it didn't have to be like this. But she and Quinn had come to an understanding, those first few days after the crash. Because looking into each other's eyes at the funeral, each shedding tears for a future torn away from them, they realize the closest they can get to Finn now, is each other. Sure, it's sick in a way, but between the two of them, he's there and there's a measure of peace in that. If they couldn't have_ him_, they could at least have have what he had.

They'll take it.

They fight a lot. At least as much as they used to. But now, it's become more angry and empty; dry, instead of passionate. Everything they'd been fighting over has already been taken from them, so now it's just a matter of habit.

They fight because that's what they did, so it's become what they do.

It's a remnant of sorts to help things feel like they did before, when Finn was always standing in-between them. Even if he's a ghost and the arguments are always over nothing, it creates a space between them that feels better in its emptiness than evaporating into nothing by themselves.

It's easier to pretend, so that's what they do.

Certain things go left unsaid. Like that it was Quinn who broke down first when they got the news. Like that he was all she ever wanted, even when she had nothing. Like that there was a reason that she had been willing to live a lie as big as Beth to be with him. Because it killed her that their real chance at a family would never happen again.

Or that Quinn hated herself for trying to convince Rachel to break off the wedding instead of going straight to him. If she'd gone to Finn, he never would have been in that car in the first place. And he and Quinn could have been together again. But Quinn went to the bridal room instead of the groom's and now faces a wedding she'll never have.

So they cling to each other, collapsed like gravity at the center of a black hole.

They fall asleep facing opposite sides of the bed, but always end up together some time during the night. They wake up wrapped up in each other and, for a moment, don't remember why.

The sex is interesting.

Sometimes it's angry: at each other, for what they had and lost, that he's not the one between them anymore. Oscillating between spiteful, bitter, and acerbic, it reads like a list of synonyms but they never sleep together when they're happy, because it'd mean they've found joy in a place that wasn't him.

The worst is when it's quiet. Because then it just feels like a slow grieving. When Quinn comes, it's taut and there's a quiet shuddering. Rachel throws her head back and opens her mouth silently in a scream that won't come, but tears usually end up rolling down her cheeks.

Other times they're scared, clutching and pulling as if the other will disappear. They crave the security they feel together, as if he's still there. It's false, but other times more true than anything else. Because ask either of them what they thought their lives would be like, and neither of them would have in a million years expected this. But for whatever reason, it works, and is better than nothing.

No one saw it coming.

Not even them.


End file.
